The Fastest Way to Learn Digital Photography - If You’re a Beginner

While that new digital camera may seem a bit confusing and complicated, you have made a wise investment, but you will only reap the benefits of owning one of these technological wonders if you learn how to use it correctly.

Rule #1: Read the Manual!

Rule number one for anyone wanting to learn and understand digital photography a bit better is to read the manual that came with your camera. Yes, there really is something worth reading in that thick book! Digital cameras come with a staggering variety of tools and settings to help amateur and professional photographers alike take amazing photographs. Of course, those are only useful to you if you know how to use them!

Your camera probably has various timers, macro settings, lighting and flash adjustments, and it may have a video camera feature as well as pre-installed settings for landscape, portrait, active or long distance imagery. Take the time to explore and experiment with these features as they will allow a photographer great flexibility, efficiency and creativity.

Rule #2: Always Keep Your Battery Charged!

Another critical pointer to a new digital photographer has to do with the camera equipment - if you can invest in a spare battery, do so! There is nothing more frustrating to creativity and exploration than equipment failure due to a dead battery. Be sure to charge batteries prior to setting out on a photo experiment, and also read the manual for energy saving tips such as shutting off the LCD display. Using a video camera feature, and video play back, may also drain the battery on a digital camera.

Rule #3: Get Out and Play!

The next step to learning digital photography is to get out and experiment with your camera. If you all ready have a good understanding of photography basics such as composition and lighting, you may already have some subjects in mind. But if you are not an experienced photographer a digital camera is a great tool to learn the process. Memory cards allow endless experimentation; the owner simply deletes the “duds” from the memory without spending a dime on film processing and prints. Digital cameras offer many settings, including auto focus and auto flash, but a new user should disable these features to see what the results are without the automatic settings.

Rule #4: Learn a Little Bit about Lighting

New digital photographers should begin their digital camera education with an examination of lighting. All digital cameras allow their settings to be adjusted, and the amount of light on any given subject will make a dramatic difference. There are cloudy day settings, red eye flash settings, macro photography settings and all of these will change the way an image appears.

If a digital photographer is prepared with an amply charged battery and a spare if possible, then they should take the time to examine their photographic results immediately on the LCD screen. You also want to be certain you have plenty of space on your memory card. Many DSLR digital cameras do not come with a memory card, so be sure to pick one up when you purchase the camera! Experimentation is much easier with digital photography, and the instant view of the resultant photographs makes the learning process much faster.

By Amy Renfrey

Amy Renfrey is the author of two major successful ebooks “Digital Photography Success” and “Advanced Digital Photography”. She is a photographer and also teaches digital photography. Her educational ebooks takes the most complex photography terms and turns them into easy to understand language so that anyone, at any level of photography, can easily move to a semi-professional level of skill in just a very short time. She’s photographed many things from famous musicians (Drummers for Prince and Anastasia) to weddings and portraits of babies. Amy also teaches photography online to her students which can be found at http://www.DigitalPhotographySuccess.com